Engagement
by Senko Wakimarin
Summary: An engagement can be many things; a simple meeting, a deadly encounter, or the entanglement of two seperate lives, forever. The story of how Kakuzu met Hidan, ad discovered what a pain he was going to be.


**Engagement**

Between them, little ever changes. Death brought them together, and when they finally parted ways, it was Death come between them. Everything between them was a fight and neither of them ever gave ground, no matter how things changed. Their life together was complicated, bloody, and often frustrating.

To Kakuzu it was business that led them to meeting. To Hidan it was the will of Jashin. In either case, the situation seemed both random and oddly well timed. Kakuzu had lost his partner, Hidan had lost everything. Though they would never admit it, they both needed someone- and in the universal comedy or amazing design that was fate, each fit the other's need.

The mission was simple enough; assassination and retrieval of artifacts. Kakuzu later would reflect that Hidan made the mission unnecessarily complicated.

In the territory between Grass and Fire countries, which was governed by no particular feudal lord and instead passed through a series of willing and inept sons (and, of course their power-hungry murderers), there lurked group of missing ninja who held information on a certain bijou and its series of containers. This group was both competition for Akatsuki and a source of valuable information.

They fell beneath his hands one by one, lives extinguished so quickly that he rarely even saw their faces. Some fought willingly, running at him to defend their base and leader; others were caught off guard or on the run. Kakuzu ended them all with a swift and thorough brutality. He did not give chase to the few that managed to escape before he could reach them; the importance was disbanding them, killing their leader, and taking their scrolls. Within minutes of his arrival, he burst into the leader's room with blood dripping from his hands; the two occupants of the room looking up at him.

The woman he recognized as the commander, the young man was another stranger. The woman stared at him in horror and knowledge of coming death, the young man stared with interest and amused curiosity. The woman reached for weapons that would never leave her hands, the young man made no move to leave his seat.

Hidan watched in fascination as the woman who had been about to hire him was murdered. The tendrils that whipped around the intruder caught her arms and held them at her sides, allowing him to take his time entering the room. He exuded an air of power that put the smallest of smiles on Hidan's lips. Muscles bulged in his arms as he shoved his fist _through_ the woman's chest, wrapping thick fingers around her heart. There was a sickening sound of suction and an arch of crimson as he ripped his hand out. Her shrieks escalated in pitch, then strangled themselves.

Dropping the still corpse, the stranger glanced briefly at Hidan, who had not flinched through the encounter. Indeed, he sat just as he had while talking with the woman, reclined slightly in his chair with his legs crossed at the knee. He let the smile spread over his lips and put his head on one side.

"Aren't you going to run?" Kakuzu asked mildly, voice cold. His fist was still closed on the warm heart of the dead woman, and as usual the murder had contented the deep-seated blood lust in his mind. The confident air of the young man amused him.

Lifting his shoulders in a slight shrug, Hidan sat up. He watched with the mildest interest as the murderer did an odd thing; he held the heart up to the light, examining it as a jeweler might appraise a new gem. "Should I?"

Gaze shifting slowly to the pale man, Kakuzu raised an eyebrow. "One would think that would be evident."

When Hidan stood, he did so fluidly, comfortably. He was in no way worried or tense; was in fact quite confident. "You're going to kill me?"

"Apparently."

The grin that parted the zealot's lips was equally excited and mad. "We'll see."

As with most fights, to the combatants it seemed to last forever. In truth, it was little more than a scuffle- quick, violent, and evidently deadly. Hidan was quick and sure of himself, but Kakuzu had size and years of experience on his side. Before there was much chance of the younger man gaining ground, he broke Hidan's neck.

Silence reigned as he set about collecting the various papers and booklets and scrolls from around the room. The skirmish with the priest had broken the desk and scattered the contents of one bookshelf all over the room. He took his time sorting through everything, careful not to miss anything pertaining to the tailed-beasts.

It was nearing dark when he finally left the compound, heading into the country side to make his camp. He slept without any disruption, waking early enough to feel dew building on his clothing and skin.

To say he was surprised to hear someone calling after him as he started out in the morning would be an understatement. That the person yelling after him was mostly screaming curses only compounded his surprise. When he turned to look, and saw the silver-haired man running toward him, he prepared himself for another fight. He wasn't sure how the other man was still alive, but he'd killed him once. Some people just didn't know how to stay dead.

But the young man did not attack him. He came to a breathless stop before Kakuzu, openly laughing at the larger man's battle-ready posture. "I'm coming with you."

If the scornful snort offended him, he didn't let it show on his face. "No, you're not."

"Am so. You're Akatsuki, right?"

Seeing no reason to lie to what really amounted to a walking corpse, Kakuzu conceded that he was indeed a member of that organization.

"So, I'm coming with you. Maybe I'll join; maybe some asshole will come and kill all the fuckers who work at _you_ base while I'm talking to your leader."

It was annoying to hear the dead man laugh when Kakuzu informed him that he was going to die. Annoyance quickly became anger when the dead man claimed that Kakuzu didn't stand a chance of killing him. He had to admit, though, that the idiot took a punch quite well. Dusting himself off and rubbing his cheek, Hidan called him a bitch and told him for the first time that he was going to hell. Kakuzu decided that he hated the dead man, and hit him again. This time the punch granted to satisfying sound of breaking bone, and hot blood gushed from the albino's nose.

Wincing, Hidan took a step back. "Fuck, you are such a _cunt_!" He growled out, wiping at the blood on his face. His nose, quite clearly broken, almost immediately began to straighten again. "You can't fucking kill me; didn't you get that when you broke my neck and I still followed you here?! Are you a fucking retard?"

There seemed no shutting the young man up. Kakuzu grit his teeth, mind refusing to clear enough for even the most basic of speech. And amazingly, the smartass who was somehow already nearly healed of his broken nose, took the moment of silence to grin at him. To grin, as if they were sharing a joke.

"Here, we'll make a deal, how about that. Fucktards like you usually love that sort of macho shit, so here we go. _You_ can do whatever you like to try and kill me, and if _I_ can get up and follow you when you're done, we carry on without any more of this punching-me-in-the-face crap."

Irritated as he was, Kakuzu did not bother with a response. The threads burst from his skin, slamming into the seemingly frail body of the younger man. Hidan's smile never left his lips, in fact he seemed to smile a bit more as the piercing began. At first Kakuzu thought he had to be imaging things- certainly his annoyance was addling his perception, because the pale man certainly couldn't be _moaning_. Blood splashed on the ground, Hidan's mouth gaped. It was surprising to hear him manage speech in such a predicament, but manage he did.

"Ah-oh… fuck…"

After a moment, the body slackened. Kakuzu let it fall, retracting the multitude of tendrils back into his body and feeling almost immediately calmer. The face, which had been such an annoyingly smug smirk, slackened, the eyes dimming. Eyes of corpses rarely actually slid shut as they showed in dramatizations- more often than not, the muscles tensed and they opened unnaturally wide. The fresh corpse lay still, holes oozing with thick blood, and that was just fine.

Feeling refreshed, Kakuzu set about collecting his things again. The annoying albino's body he would leave for the birds; why waste time with the corpse of some ignorant, arrogant fool?

Of course, delighted though the ex-waterfall ninja may have been to think it, Hidan was not dead. He was a bit shocked by the silent ferocity behind the attack, and feeling a bit dizzy from the undeniable pleasure of such an attack, but he was very much alive. The sound of footsteps brought him back to clarity and he slowly sat up. Kakuzu's back was toward him, and he was already walking away, posture relaxed.

Grinning (because Hidan loved to win), the maimed zealot sat up. "I'm just shittin' you, man," he called, delighting in the way the other man froze, stiff with shock. As the other man slowly turned around, Hidan climbed to his feet, dusting his bare shoulders off as if he weren't full of ragged holes. Kakuzu, either too shocked or actually accepting the terms of their 'deal', made no move to touch the younger man as he caught up. After nearly a whole minute in which neither spoke and Kakuzu stared at the healing wounds covering the pale torso of his new travelling companion. Eventually they began to walk, the shorter with a bit of a happy spring to his step, the older with a grumpy slouch.

"…You're going to be annoying, aren't you?" Kakuzu finally asked, though Hidan had thus far been deceptively quiet.

The zealot looked at him and grinned. The look was quite pointedly evil. "Without a doubt."

---

A.N. The word 'engagement' can mean many things. It can mean a meeting; a fight; a bond between two people. Kakuzu and Hidan have always been my old married couple, engaged in my mind from their first meeting.


End file.
